Page - 158 - in Siting Futurity - The “Feel Good” Tactical Radicalism of Contemporary Culture in and around Vienna

158 siting futurity Where a stronger case for nostalgia can be made is in the realm of style.8 Noting the “[d]ope, long hair and idealism” of the trio in The Edukators, Cliffe characterizes them as “radical hippies” (Cliffe 2005). What this comment gestures towards is the way the accoutrements of the drop-out lifestyle of the ’60s seem to lend themselves to the making of commodified come- backs, most recently the campervan. The desires they kindle can indeed be described as nostalgic — for a time when there were still parts of the world that unreflectively privileged, mid- dle class young people from both sides of the Atlantic could set out for to escape the stifling, standardizing propriety of their upbringings. If one looks into The Edukators’s soundtrack, one sees Weingart ner commenting on this theme in two tracks in particular. When Jan and Peter are kicking back on their narrow balcony in a side street in gentrifying Prenzlauerberg, they lis- ten to “Heimweh” [“Homesickness”]), the 1956 German version of Dean Martin’s “Memories Are Made of This” that launched Austrian singer Freddie Quinn’s mercurial career as a Schlager singer.9 Second is setting Jan and Jule’s growing feelings for each other to Jeff Buckley’s pluckily distinctive version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” In both cases, the reversionings under- score the film’s theme of needing to update and learn from as- pects of the past that one feels drawn towards, to explore the nature of the attraction, to interrogate how it might work in the present to make possible the kind of future one would prefer to inhabit, and to have fun in the process. As Weingart ner declared about The Edukators, “‘The main reason why I wanted this film to have an optimistic tone and to reproduce the comedy of life 8 While Weingartner’s style may diverge somewhat from Helmut Lang’s, they share a cognizance of the workings of style and a rejection of institu- tional authorities, not to mention shared experiences of the Austrian Alps as a refuge and Vienna as a springboard. For a locational reading of Lang, see Ingram (2018b). 9 Schlager music is nicely described on Wikipedia as “a style of popular music which is generally a catchy instrumental accompaniment to vocal pieces of pop music with simple, happy-go-lucky, and often sentimental lyrics” (“Schlager Music”).